Category Archives: Meta

Best bud and “Friend of HeroMachine” John Hartwell is in town and we’re headed up to Telluride today through Friday for unplugged Mancation time. That means I’ll have very limited Internet access, so your moderated comments will be more delayed than usual until I can get to a wi-fi spot to check in via the iTouch. I’ve also got our regularly scheduled features queued up and ready to go so it’ll be like I’m still here.

Be good to each other!

If you’re a Facebook user who hasn’t yet “liked” the HeroMachine Facebook page, you just missed out on a quick post and link to the new “Avengers” Captain America costume. You could be there, right now, trashing it! Get busy!

When you’re posting an image of your character to this blog (like for a contest), please post a link directly to your image and not to a jump page. Here’s how you do that for the various services.

ImageShack

To the right of your ImageShack image is this box, titled “Links to Share This Image”:

You want to use the URL in the “Direct Link” box. You do NOT want to use the URL from your browser’s address bar. The former takes you to the image and only the image, while the latter loads up all the ImageShack stuff that goes around it.

Good: http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/6329/leomm.jpg (From the “Direct Link” box in “Links to Share This Image” box.) 
Bad: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/4/leomm.jpg/# (From the browser URL)
Bad: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/4/leomm.jpg/ (From the “Link” box in “Links to Share This Image” box.)

PhotoBucket

To the right of your PhotoBucket image is a box labeled “Share this photo”:

You want the link from the box labeled “Direct Link”, not the one from the browser’s address bar or the one from the box labeled “Email and IM”. The former takes you to the image and only the image, while the latter loads up all the PhotoBucket stuff that goes around it.

Good: http://i761.photobucket.com/albums/xx260/hastur1/Hero_Machine/cavalier.jpg (From the “Direct Link” box.)
Bad: http://media.photobucket.com/image/heromachine/hastur1/Hero_Machine/cavalier.jpg?o=189 (From the browser’s address bar.)
Bad: http://media.photobucket.com/image/heromachine/hastur1/Hero_Machine/cavalier.jpg?o=189 (From the box labeled “Email and IM”.)

PicasaWeb

PicasaWeb is not one of the preferred image hosts for this site. However, if you want to use it, please right-click on the image and choose “Copy Image URL” from the flyout menu:

Good: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-HkpI-oBLspE/ThzQBQMpO3I/AAAAAAAADx8/52YwBH9XzKk/%25255BUNSET%25255D.jpg (From right-clicking the image and choosing “Copy Image URL” from the flyout.)
Bad: https://picasaweb.google.com/110582698825637617540/Illustrations?authkey=Gv1sRgCLea29PPkPPaxwE#5628602354252725106 (From the browser’s address bar.)
Bad: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/8-no1oyz2HnpccqCZQzfCg0SVwt_GzEs7LqBcwS4Hj4?feat=directlink (From the “Link to this photo” box over on the right side.)

Facebook

Facebook is the least preferred image host for this site. However, if you have to use it, make sure you set the image’s properties to “public” or else I can’t see it no matter what you do. To do that, edit the album you’re going to use for your HeroMachine images and choose “Edit Album”. In the dropdown labeled “Privacy”, choose “Everyone” like this:

Since in February Facebook instituted their new JavaScript photo scroller, I can’t figure out how to get a direct link. I know AJW still uses the direct method, so if you’re willing to chime in via comments on how you do it, I’d appreciate it.

Deviant Art

Deviant Art is the home to a lot of mature illustrators. When looking at your image, in the right hand column is this set of links:

Right-click on the “Download Image” link, and choose “Copy Link Location” or “Copy Target Link”, however it shows in the popup menu.

So the site is still having problems. My latest gambit is to throw kinetically-charged playing cards at it. Ha ha, that’s a Cajun mutant joke because I’m a Cajun and there’s this mutant named Gambit and … ahem. Clearly I am becoming unhinged.

As I was saying, my latest gambit was to turn off a number of WordPress plugins. We’ll see if that helps.

In the meantime, you can keep up with all things HeroMachine via the HeroMachine Facebook page if you’re so inclined. Even if the site itself is down, I post updates there about what’s going on.

Thank you all for your patience, I know it’s frustrating.

Over the last week, this site’s been having some connectivity issues. In an effort to track down why, I’ve made some back-end changes, disabled the rotating “Featured Character” box in the header, and essentially removed the “Hall of Fame” page for now. If any of that helps, I’ll add them back one by one to see which is causing the problems.

Basically the hosting company is telling me that some scripts were taking too much processor time and so were shutting down access to the page. Since the latter two scripts are the only ones I’ve added recently, I’m figuring they’re probably the culprits, but we’ll see.

New posts (including the contest results and new contest announcement) will be delayed. Hopefully we can get the outstanding issue resolved quickly and normal posting will resume sooner rather than later.

I don’t have any answers and I can’t explain things any further, so I’ve disabled comments on this post. When I know something definitive, I’ll update you.

ETA: Obviously, the problem was resolved and normal posting has resumed. Huzzah!